


Chasing Rabbits, Chasing Hope - Platonic VLD Week Day #7

by hufflepirate



Series: Platonic VLD Week [7]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Flashbacks, Gen, Jaeger Pilots, Jaegers (Pacific Rim), The Drift (Pacific Rim)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-04
Updated: 2017-03-04
Packaged: 2018-09-28 07:00:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10078658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hufflepirate/pseuds/hufflepirate
Summary: Pacific Rim AU - After Coran and Allura have a rough day in the drift, Coran finds out that Shiro did too.  Voltron works differently than the other jaegers - it has to in order to fit 5 pilots - but Coran won't let his discomfort with Voltron's inner workings stop him from trying to help the jaeger's young pilots.  After all, he promised himself that he'd look after them, just like he looks after Allura.  He and Allura may have shared their darkest memories today, but he can still share some good ones with Shiro, and he can be there when Allura's ready to talk about everything again.Prompt was Free Day / AU.(T rating is because Coran thinks about him and Allura reliving the total destruction of Altea.)





	

Coran and Allura were quiet, walking to their usual table in the mess hall. He almost spoke to her, but words never made _sense_ between them right after they'd been in the drift. They sometimes didn't speak for hours afterward, because they didn't need to, or they didn't want to, or they were thinking about the way, outside the drift, their words fell clunkily and imperfectly from their lips until they almost couldn't stand it. People laughed at them for being worse than the other pilots, but most of the others still felt the same, even if they tended to come back to themselves a little faster.

At the table, Voltron's pilots were in rare form today, talking and laughing at half again their usual volume. Their jaeger was the newest, and the biggest, and wildly experimental, and everyone had been sure that the pilots - any set of pilots, but especially these weird teenage misfits that had somehow all turned out to be drift compatible with Shiro - wouldn't be able to actually fly the thing. And yet, they could. They did. They hadn't seen combat yet, but their training, after a hopeless first 6 weeks that almost made them pull the plug on the whole project, was finally taking off.

Coran saw Allura's soft half-smile and stopped looking around at the other tables in the hopes that one would be quieter. They could talk about their tough drift later, if they needed to. Right now, they needed some levity. 

Even before they sat down, their friends were greeting them, roping them into their conversations.

"Allura, you should have seen how far I kicked this rusted car! I kicked it super hard and it just _flew_ and-" Lance started, before Keith interrupted.

"It doesn't _matter_ how far it went! It made us fall _down_! If you'd-"

"Sorry," Hunk interrupted, "That's partially on me. I wasn't ready. I mean, yeah, Lance overbalanced us too, but-"

"But what you're _both_ forgetting is that it was _awesome_!" Lance insisted.

Allura was tuned in to the boys' conversation, looking back and forth between them as they all talked over each other, but Pidge was talkative today, too, launching questions at Coran as soon as he was seated. "Hey, Coran, how much do you know about the alignment sensors in the jaegers?"

"Some," he answered her, not sure what she was getting at yet, "Why?"

"I think Voltron's could be working better. Sometimes it's really like it's _our_ body, but other times it's like we're just _piloting_ , you know? Like there's a delay a little between when we move and when it does, but maybe I'm imagining that, but _anyway_ , I heard you rebuilt The Castle yourself after-" she blushed, like she'd suddenly realized it might not be polite to mention the day Coran had lost everything.

He shoved that thought away, launching into all the technical specifications of the alignment sensors, which he knew well enough to explain even with his mouth half on autopilot.

The darkest day of Coran's life was always near the surface, but he tried not to think about it too much when he knew he and Allura would be drifting again soon. The Voltron pilots hadn't been around when he and Allura had started training together. They hadn't seen them struggle and chase the rabbit and suddenly find themselves paralyzed in the middle of training by the fact that blending their memories together made them real and sometimes the reality of those memories was too much. They hadn't seen them nearly destroy their jaeger when they trained in it, and they hadn't seen them outside their jaeger, perpetually red-eyed, crying and almost-crying for months.

Allura wasn't looking at him and didn't seem to be listening to his conversation with Pidge, but she reached over to squeeze his hand for a moment anyway.

He shoved all of that away, focusing on Pidge's technical questions instead, and getting back on top of his emotions. Today had been a tough drift, and a little problem-solving was just what he needed to get his mind off that right now.

After lunch, he let Pidge drag him back to the jaegers to look at Voltron with her, while Lance, Hunk, and Keith ran off with Allura to do who knew what. Shiro came along with him and Pidge, even though he didn't have any particular skills in this kind of work.

While Pidge scurried ahead, Shiro put a hand on Coran's shoulder for a moment. "Hey, are you guys ok? You both seemed kind of shaken when you were in line." Coran nodded, "We're fine, thanks. It's just the drift. Some days are better than others."

Shiro snorted, not quite a real laugh, "Don't I know it." Something about it didn't feel like the joke it was probably supposed to be.

There was a list a mile long of reasons none of the 7 of them who shared their table in the mess should be piloting jaegers, but here they were anyway. Coran resolved, for the hundredth time, to look after the rest of these youngsters like he did Allura.

The three of them climbed into Voltron's cockpit, which was huge and strange, with 5 sets of neural links instead of 2. It felt strangely foreign to Coran, even though he'd watched it being built and even consulted a little on its design.

The links weren't side by side, like his and Allura's. The pilots each had a body part, with Shiro in the middle, in charge. A little shudder ran through Coran at the thought, and he thought he partially understood why Shiro wasn't standing near the middle now that he didn't have to be there. Pidge was opening the panels that enclosed Voltron's electrical systems, chattering on happily about the tweaks she wanted to make, and didn't seem to notice that Coran was quiet now or that Shiro was standing as far off to the side as he could get.

Coran shook his head to clear it. He was too morose today. He needed to snap out of it. It was harder than usual, after this morning. But he could do it. Keeping a positive attitude was better for everyone. He dove back into Pidge's project, peering over her shoulder to help out.

They couldn't test their work out until the next day, not without the other pilots, but both Pidge and Coran eventually decided it was done and safe for testing, and Shiro helped them close up the control panel and climb out of the jaeger.

Shiro seemed to breathe easier outside of the cockpit, something tense in his shoulders relaxing. Coran held him back for a minute, letting Pidge race away to tell the others about her latest modifications.

"You're quiet today," he said gently, hoping Shiro would get his point.

"I'm always quiet." Shiro grinned, making it a joke, but the smile didn't reach his eyes.

Coran snorted. The direct approach it was, then. "You're quieter than usual."

Shiro rubbed the back of his neck with one hand - the human one, not the prosthetic. "Yeah," he said, "It was kind of a rough training day. I mean, I think _they're_ all fine, but it was rough for me."

Coran nodded, but the hair on the back of his neck was prickling a little. The thing about the jaegers, about the drift, about this _whole thing_ was that it made both pilots equal, blended them together into one unified being so that everything you felt, you felt together, whether it was your emotion or not, and everything you did, you did together, whether it was your idea or not. You shared it all, yourself and not-yourself at the same time, and sometimes it was terrifying and sometimes it was beautiful, but either way it was how it _worked_.   If one of you had a rough drift, both of you did, though if the problem was the other person's memories, you sometimes recovered faster.

It didn't work the same for Voltron. Not quite. Voltron was too big, and there were too many minds, and every time Coran thought of that central neural link, the one without any particular appendages attached, the one that called just for a _mind_ , he felt his stomach twist a little.

But he'd promised. He'd promised to look after these kids. He'd never said it out loud, but he didn't need to for Allura to know, and even if it had just been in his own head, he'd still _promised_. "What happened?" he asked.

Shiro looked at a loss for words, and Coran realized this wasn't the kind of conversation for the middle of a hallway.

"Actually, wait," he said, before Shiro could answer, "Let's go get some tea in the mess. Make a real chat out of it." He nudged Shiro jovially with his elbow, trying to pretend he wasn't uncomfortable with even _thinking_ about what it was like being the mind of Voltron.

Shiro wrinkled his forehead. "Are you sure? I know a lot of the other pilots are uncomfortable-"

"Of course!" Coran interrupted, forcing the usual jollity into his voice even though he wasn't feeling it, "If you can't talk to your friends about their problems, who _can_ you talk to?"

Shiro smiled, genuinely this time, and for a moment, it was worth it. "Thanks, Coran."

In the mess hall, Coran let Shiro pick one of the many empty tables for them to sit at and went to get the tea. "Just be two tics!" he said, trying not to let on that he was gathering his strength up for this conversation.

Voltron pulled all of its pilots into the drift, like the other jaegers. They did, apparently, still see each other's memories and thoughts and feel each other's emotions. But there were so many of them in Voltron, too many, and when they said they didn't feel like the pilots of the other jaegers did, that they didn't let go of themselves, that they were together and separate all at once instead of being just _together_ , most of them at the facility got uncomfortable.

How could you trust people who saw your thoughts without _being_ you? How could you know they weren't twisting those thoughts, those memories? How could you know they understood, when they were still separate from you?

The intimacy of the jaeger was a terrible and powerful thing, but what made it work was that you came out of it with the feeling of being _known_ , being understood from your first breath to your latest one, of knowing someone understood you blood and bone and soul and all. It was what you clung to when bad memories surfaced in the drift, when you faced the things you regretted, or were ashamed of. It was what made you strong enough to go back in, again and again, to give yourself up over and over and not pull yourself out again until your job was done.

None of them liked to think too hard about what it would be like to give up only part of yourself, but to give it up over and over again, never quite sure that anyone else really understood what you showed them, what you did, what you felt, who you were. None of them liked to think that you might feel reduced instead of expanded, narrowed down to an arm or a leg or a few memories that looked but didn't _feel_. None of them liked to wonder what it was that they'd _really_ asked these children to do, when they were the only ones who turned out to fit Voltron's needs.

Coran let his face fall as he made the tea, pouring hot water from the dispenser into mugs, but he had his smile back on in full force by the time he slid into a seat across from Shiro.

"What's the problem?" he asked, offering Shiro one of the mugs. "Anything I can help with?"

Shiro took the tea. "Thank you." Then he didn't answer the question for a moment, staring into the mug instead.

Coran bobbed his tea bag up and down, letting Shiro take his time, and waited.

After a moment, Shiro looked up at him and dove straight in, going for the root of the problem like he always did. "I worry that I'm going to take them over," he said, "When we're in there together." He paused for a moment, like admitting it had been hard, but pushed forward, "When we're in there, I'm supposed to be directing traffic. Cooling tempers, easing fears, sorting through our ideas when we have more than one at once. I know that's different. I know for the rest of you it's -" He stopped because didn't have the words for it. That was ok. Coran didn't have the words either, and he'd actually _experienced_ it.

Coran let Shiro take a moment, trying to look encouraging but suddenly worried that his smile was too much, that he'd gone overboard again and he was going to lose him. Shiro needed somebody. If Shiro was talking, he needed not to mess it up.

"It's not that we don't do it together," Shiro clarified. "We _do_. And they do a lot of sorting themselves. Pidge and Hunk will have an idea together and the rest of us get out of the way of the PidgeHunk idea so we can do it, or we suddenly all five think of something at once, or if we're really doing well, ideas show up and we can feel their - I dunno, _singleness_ or something, but we can't tell who they came from and we don't care. It's not like we're all fighting for credit. We're not, and we're happiest when we can't tell, but - sometimes -" He stopped again, waving a hand like the words couldn't come, or like he knew them but couldn't make them come out.

He needed an answer. Coran wasn't sure what that answer would be. But he couldn't keep stalling. "I'm sure you're doing your best. It's a hard job, harder than the rest of ours. But those kids trust you. You can see it in the way they look at you. You're a good leader, Shiro."

Coran could immediately tell from Shiro's face that it had been the wrong thing to say. "Look," he said, switching tracks, "Why don't you just tell me what happened today, and maybe we can figure it out?"

Shiro sat up again and nodded, taking a deep breath.

"It was just a second," he said, "Maybe less. Lance was trying that kick, and he was _so excited_ about it. When he gets excited it's -" he struggled for the words again, eyes going distant, "It's _bright_. It's so bright. Everybody feels it, and if there are doubts that swirl around it, too, that's ok, because it's still _there_ , and sometimes we're too tense and we hold it back - hold _him_ back, I always worry, but he knows, I think, that it's just fear, he _must_ know, because we're all _feeling_ it, but as both feelings at once, but -" Shiro shook his head slightly, words failing him again, "But anyway, we were trying his kick and we fell, and in that moment of falling, I -" He shook his head. "I can't. I'm sorry, Coran, I know you're just trying to help, but-"

Shiro started to stand up, but Coran stopped him with a hand on his wrist, "Shiro, nothing you tell me could make me think less of you. Those kids are _happy_. The middle of a _war_ , and they're happy. Whatever you did, whatever you _thought_ , they're ok. They're _better_ than ok. They're better than they were when they _got_ here. You're doing something right with them. Maybe more than I am with Allura."

Sometimes he wondered about that, about whether letting Allura into her father's place in the Castle was the right call or the wrong one, whether he was healing her or breaking her forever, whether their work together was getting them over the loss of Altea or just making them relive it over and over so that they'd never escape. Instantly, he felt he'd said too much. He was here to cheer Shiro up, not to pile on more problems.

But then it turned out that it had been the right thing, this time. Shiro wavered for a moment, and then sat back down.

"I love those kids, Coran," he said, leaning in closer so he could talk more quietly, "They're-" There weren't words for what the people who went into the drift with you were, so Shiro waved his hand again, helpless, and Coran nodded back. He understood.

"I would _never_ hurt them if I was in control of myself," Shiro continued passionately, "But in that one little moment, when we were actually falling, it occurred to me that I-" he paused, then leaned in further.

Coran leaned closer, so that he could hear when Shiro said, barely louder than a whisper, "I could take over, Coran. I could control the whole thing, if I wanted to, if they were still there to give the neural link somewhere to diffuse. I could shove them out of the way and take the whole thing on myself. I felt it. I felt the whole jaeger, every bit of it, and before we hit the ground, I knew that if there were any point to it, I could shove the others out of the way and all of it would be me."

Coran shuddered visibly, unable to help himself, and Shiro covered his face. " _Quiznak_ , I'm such a terrible person."

Coran reached out, almost as involuntarily as he'd shuddered, and grabbed Shiro's shoulder. "No, Shiro. No. You're not."

Shiro shook his head, face still covered.

"Shiro, you said it yourself. You love them. You'd never hurt them."

"But it would be _so easy_ ," Shiro said softly, putting his hands down, but staring at the middle of Coran's chest instead of his face. "It would be so easy. It would take just a second - a _millisecond_ \- when I couldn't stop myself, and I don't know what would happen to them. I'm afraid it would break them. We're not meant to have our minds taken over by someone else's. Not like that. What if I _killed_ them? What if it was _worse_? What if I _erased_ them, blotted them out, and their bodies were still there, walking around, but they were gone and I -" He covered his face again.

Coran was shaking, but he couldn't take his hand off Shiro's shoulder now, or he'd think it meant something bad. Shiro was shaking too, and Coran hoped it was masking the quiver in his hand. He had to say something. He had to make it better.

"Shiro," he started, "part of that was probably just adrenaline. Your copilots would have that too. Their minds would fight back. They're all fighters."

Shiro shook his head, speaking a little louder to make himself heard through the hands still blocking his face. "You don't understand, Coran. You don't understand how much they look to me when we're in there. It's - they trust me _completely_. And they get preoccupied with their own limbs, because they know I'm looking out for everyone, and they - sometimes they wouldn't even notice, I don't think. Sometimes I think I could turn us around and have us going backward, attacking someone else, and they'd still trust me."

Coran had no answer to that. None. It was big and terrifying and unfathomable to him. So he'd just have to talk, and hope some of it was right. Hope some of it worked.

"I was terrified the first time I drifted with Allura's father," he said, letting himself remember even though he usually didn't. "Alfor and I grew up together. We'd been friends since we were children, but he - he was my _king_. He loved me like a brother, and I knew that, but he also," he wasn't even sure how to explain this to someone without a king of his own. "From the day he was born, he was my prince. My mother was his wet nurse and we grew up together, and he never acted like we were anything but brothers, and I always knew it wasn't true. Not even when it felt true. I knew he was a good man, and a good boy before that. I knew he'd try to do the right thing, and I knew he'd listen if I told him he wasn't. And that was enough. That was enough to make it ok that we'd never be the same."

Shiro was looking at him again, listening intently, but Coran couldn't read his face. He kept going.

"I stood beside Alfor at his wedding. I put the crown on his head after his father died. I held Allura when she was an hour old. But I always knew that if he gave me orders, I would follow them, no matter what they were, even if they were bad orders. I always knew that if he didn't want to listen, he wouldn't have to. I always knew if we fought - if we _really_ fought - he could destroy me. And it was all I could think about when we were about to go into the drift."

Coran paused and Shiro raised an eyebrow, silently asking for more of the story. Coran nodded, collecting himself again. He didn't talk about this. Not ever. It hurt too much, and it made everything too raw and recent and near the surface. He and Allura had been bad enough in the drift today. Tomorrow was going to be a disaster. But it was too late to do anything about that now, so he might as well push forward.

"I was so afraid that when the drift opened my mind up, he was going to find out I wasn't who he thought. I was so afraid he'd hate me for all the times I was afraid of him, all the times I thought about who he was and held my tongue. I was afraid that he'd see the way I couldn't stop thinking, the first time I held Allura, that this was going to be my queen some day. She was beautiful, _so_ beautiful, and so much like her father, and I knew she would be good, I could _feel_ it, but the next minute the other thought was there, too, that this was the _princess_ and one day she'd be my queen."

"I was sure he'd be in charge in the drift, the way he was always in charge, the way he had the _right_ to be, even though everybody said that wasn't how the drift worked, and I was sure I would resent it, and then he'd find all the rest, all the little moments where I hated him for being the prince, and I almost didn't go. I almost told them I didn't think I was strong enough."

Coran paused to calm down. It had been so long since he'd thought about this outside the drift, and all the emotions were surging back, like it was happening all over again.

"What happened?" Shiro prompted.

"I went anyway," Coran answered. But it wasn't enough. It wasn't the real answer. Shiro gave him a moment.

"I chased the rabbit almost as soon as we were in the drift," Coran continued, "We flowed past a memory of a fight we had when we were 10 or 11 and I thought ' _There's_ one I don't want him to see,' and the next thing I knew there we were, both of us, and I was yelling at him that we couldn't do something, I don't even remember what, but me and Alfor were always a couple of little adventurers, and he couldn't understand why I didn't want to do it, and I couldn't tell him it was because my grandfather had just yelled at me for letting him put himself in danger. It was at the tip of my tongue the whole fight, 'You're the prince,' and I couldn't say it. I couldn't let myself, because I knew it would hurt him, and in the end he stormed off and neither of us talked to each other for days."

"In the drift, it was this big feedback loop, 'cause he had the memory, too. I could feel everything I felt at the time, but I could feel him too, the way he felt then and suddenly I knew. He was just a kid, and he was stuck inside a lot more than the rest of us, getting diplomacy lessons and dance lessons and the rest, and he was trying to prove himself. And then I knew he knew about me, 'cause I felt his surprise, and I was terrified, but he was sad, and then somehow I was both at once, and that's when we made it back into the drift somehow, and I still don't know how we did it."

"It didn't last long, because before we could get in control of the Castle, Alfor was chasing the rabbit, too. He saw his coronation, I guess, and he just had to know, and then we were gone again. It was hard enough the first time, being so proud I could burst, but so sad knowing I was going to miss the way it was once his duties started pulling him away from me, and this time it was all the things he felt too, like our emotions were just in a big pot, a big old emotion soup, and that's when they pulled us out of it by force, just when I thought I was going to burst."

Shiro was still watching him intently, like he expected more of the story.

"The minute we were out, he ripped his helmet off, so they couldn't hear him through his comms, and I was still trying to get my head on straight again when he got out of his restraints and pulled me out of mine and I thought I was in for it for not being a real brother like he wanted, but instead he pulled me into the biggest hug I ever got, and I think that's when I figured out both of us were crying. It was a beautiful moment."

"What did you do?" Shiro asked, "How did you get back into a jaeger again after that?"

Coran laughed. "We sat there in the Castle and we talked it out. Just talked 'til we were blue in the face, and I told him all the things I'd never had the guts to say before, and outside they were freaking out, pounding on the door until Alfor picked his helmet back up and put it on and told them to leave us alone, and we'd come out when we were good and ready, 'cause he was the king and he could do things like that. We must have talked for hours, and then we got to the end and he just gave me this look with a glint in his eye, like we were 9 years old, and he said, 'Wanna go again, copilot?'"

"Did you?"

"Yeah. First successful drift, and perfectly aligned. We put the Castle through her paces for the first time, proved she worked like she'd been built for us, which she had, and never looked back. That's the thing with the drift. My whole life and I never believed I'd really feel like Alfor's brother the way he always said we were. My whole life and I never thought I'd stop feeling like he was my king before he was anything else. And then a couple hours in a jaeger, and I knew it never had to be that way again. A couple hours in a jaeger and he was still my king, but he was also me, and I was him, and I knew I'd always push him if I had to."

Shiro smiled softly, but something in his eyes was still sad.

"Trust the drift, Shiro," Coran said, "You're all getting better at it. When the drift is strong, any of them would push back strong enough to protect you all. When the drift is strong, it won't let you take over."

Coran could read the doubt in Shiro's face as he looked down at his mug, but all he said was, "You're probably right."

"I would have followed Alfor to the gates of hell, without a second thought. But in the drift, we were the same. And what we did, the work we did before he-" he couldn't say it, pushing on instead, "It was both of us. It was _always_ both of us."

Shiro looked up at him, smiling. "Thanks, Coran. That _does_ help." He still looked sad, but not as much as he had. Coran decided to call it a win.

He smiled back at Shiro, but that didn't mean he wasn't going to keep thinking about the problem. He got up, patting Shiro on the shoulder before he walked off to put away his tea cup and find Allura and the others.

The rest of the day was mostly normal, bad drifts this morning or not, and it wasn't until he sat outside after dinner to watch the sunset from one of the lawn chairs they'd left on the roof, that things got serious again.

Allura came to join him, climbing into his lap like she'd done as a child. He wrapped his arms around her and let her lean back against his chest.

"At least we stayed in the drift," Coran said after a moment, "We made it through."

"Mm-hmm," Allura said, clearly not ready to talk about it.

They'd re-lived the destruction of their island a hundred times, by now. The first time he stepped into the jaeger with Allura by his side, he'd almost turned back. But he'd known she would forgive him for showing her what he'd seen, and he'd known that neither of them would forgive him for holding her back. They were all that was left of the kingdom of Altea. She might still be going by Princess because they had no country left for her to be queen of, but he'd known she was going to be a leader since the day she was born. Whatever she did with her future now, he planned to be there, right behind her.

He had told her every day that she didn't have to do this anymore if she didn't want to, that she could stop if it was too painful, but they were just words. They both knew it was too painful, and they both knew they were going to do it anyway. Standing up for other islands wasn't much, but it was better than nothing. He'd helped rebuild the Castle himself, once he was healed, from as many of the original parts as they could salvage. It was almost like having something left.

They'd done everything wrong those first few months. Coran had been an experienced pilot already, but too much of him wanted to run after Alfor for him to be able to help Allura stay in the drift. Neither of them had wanted to relive the day Altea died, but sometimes the memories you tried to avoid caught you the strongest. He knew every moment of it, from his own perspective floating in a fragment of crushed jaeger, reeling from the loss of a best friend who was still in his head when he died, to the perspective of a dozen television cameras, the live feeds up on screens in front of a teenaged Allura who was watching, in real time, as her home was destroyed.

They'd been lucky that Allura was on a visit to her father at the station when the Category 3 kaiju rose from the ocean. It was the strongest one they'd ever seen before, the strongest one that had ever come through. Other people had fought Category 2s, but Coran and Alfor had only gone up against Category 1s. They'd leapt into action, leaving Allura behind, only to find a beast stronger than they could handle, a beast that didn't just bite and claw and roar, but shot an acidic compound that burned through their armor.

Once it had stopped the jaeger, it had attacked Altea, and Coran had been stuck, with nothing he could do but watch. With the other jaegers stationed where the scientists had predicted the beast would go, there was no one to help until it was far too late, and even when the others made it, the beast blew itself up, destroying everything it hadn't already ruined. The wreckage had made it impossible to clean up the kaiju blue fast enough and they'd been left with a dead island to bury a dead people in.

Coran had been in the hospital until long after the rescue efforts had stopped, unconscious most of the time in a medically-induced coma. The first time he saw Allura's memories of trying to clean up, to find survivors, to treat them, to bury the dead, had not been much better than reliving memories of the day they lost it all. There had been a few survivors, a horrifically small number, and Allura had watched them all die, one after the other, from kaiju blue poisoning.

He hadn't known, until they drifted, that the day she crawled into his hospital bed with him and said she was staying at the facility was the day the last of the injured Alteans died. He'd only known that by the time he was on his feet again, they were all that was left, except a handful of ex-pats who had left Altea before the destruction and given it up to belong somewhere else.

When they came out after the first of those memories, Allura had cried against his chest because it had been so awful, and because it was so much better doing it again knowing how proud he was of her. She hadn't realized she was being strong. She'd felt fragile, weak, always on the edge of falling apart. But she hadn't. She'd done what had to be done. She'd stood by her people, even when that meant burying them. He'd never hurt more, and he'd never been prouder.

He and Allura hadn't chased the rabbit, today, but they'd gotten bits and pieces of all of it in the drift, relentlessly unhappy memories swirling around them. Alfor had been there, like he was always there in the drift, but only as he'd been when the kaiju first started coming, stressed and desperate and hunting for a way to protect his people. The weight of the kingdom had never weighed so heavily on him as it had then, and the jaeger had been their saving grace, not only because they could use it to protect Altea, but also because Coran could lend Alfor a little of his own strength, take some of the weight onto his own shoulders. Knowing Alfor hadn't had to hold it all forever didn't help enough in the drift, though. Not when he could still feel what Alfor had felt in those days, the emotions not-quite-his and strong enough to send a shiver down his spine like Alfor was a ghost and not a memory.

"I miss him," Allura finally said, drawing Coran out of his thoughts.

"Me too," he answered. Sometimes, they had to state the obvious. Sometimes it wasn't enough just to know they both felt it.

"Why can't the drift be happy more often?" Allura asked, probably rhetorically. "Why can't it always be like having Father back or remembering the good times or - or like that time we found out we both dreamed about flying when we were kids?"

Coran smiled. "That was fun. If there was ever a _time_ to chase the rabbit-"

Allura laughed. " _Much_ more practical than that time I tried to make wings out of my bedsheets."

Coran snorted. "We got to you before you could jump."

"Maybe that's what I'll do when this is all over," Allura said absently, "Go to school and become a jetpack designer. After I invent a jetpack."

"Pidge and Hunk would help," he suggested.

"And Keith and Lance would test them!"

And Shiro would act like the grownup he was and stop them before they could hurt themselves. And that was it. The wheels started turning in Coran's head.

"Do you really want to start learning some engineering?" he asked Allura.

She leaned forward to look at his face, eyes narrowed. "What are you up to, Coran?"

He smiled, giving it away even as he kept his voice casual and innocent, "Nothing! You've gotten to be a great mechanic, so I thought it might be time to take the next step."

"Well, whatever project you're thinking of, I'm in," she said, matching him for feigned innocence.

"I want to make Voltron a pair of wings. Shiro needs something to control. They'll still need his leadership, but-" But he couldn't tell her all of what Shiro had said this afternoon. "The drift wasn't meant for a body and a head," he said eventually.

"Agreed," she said whole-heartedly, "I always get uncomfortable if I think about that. And I'm sure it's not any weirder learning how to use wings when you haven't got any than it is learning how to merge your mind with 4 other people you only met recently."

She settled back against his chest. "We can tell him tomorrow." He nodded.

The sky was still lit up with flaming clouds that reflected off the ocean, and with the problem solved - or at least a solution formulated - he was perfectly content to stay here.


End file.
